Quitting
by Someone aka Me
Summary: "…he's pretty and you like to watch him dance when you tug on the puppet strings." SherlockDraco. Drugs and manipulation.


_For Paula and best-muse Ann, from Harry and Clara_

_Related to my oneshot "The Dragon," which tells the story of Draco and Sherlock's first meeting. All you need to know is that Draco is Sherlock's dealer, and this is a Muggle!AU._

_Warnings for drugs, a fair bit of swearing, and a really messed up relationship._

_._

_I need to quit_, you tell yourself, but you aren't sure if you mean the cocaine or this fucked up thing you call a relationship. Either way, the statement is true.

You aren't even sure how it started — no, not the cocaine. you remember how _that_ started just fine. But the relationship… he's pretty and you like to watch him dance when you tug on the puppet strings. He means nothing to you but that doesn't matter. You mean nothing to him.

He's the first person who you've ever met who can meet your gaze and isn't related to you. He's not quite as smart, not quite as clever as you — _but then, who is? Besides maybe Mycroft _— but he's damn close and you like that. You like not being stared at blankly, you like being followed as your mind makes unnatural leaps. You like being surprised, because sometimes, _sometimes_… he gets there first.

He isn't boring, you'll give him that. You chose him precisely for that reason. He isn't boring. He's quick and clever and has nimble violinist's hands and he reminds you of you — rich family, ostracised for being too _different_, but by choice — him for _principles_, you because you're better off alone.

You think sometimes he just pretends to have principles because he knows people like that. You think he's more like you than he likes to admit. You don't pretend. You're compassionless and you know it, you admit it, and you are freer that way.

Besides, he can't deal cocaine and pretend to have morals. You see right through that ruse — but he's fooling himself and just this once you don't shatter it because… because maybe you are a bit attached to those fragile grey eyes — tough from being broken too many times over but still breakable. You could break him. You could, with a few well placed words.

But the thing is, he could break you, too. Because he _sees_ you, impossibly, in a way you're used to seeing other people but you aren't used to being seen. His dark gray gaze pierces your skin, looks deeper. It's unnerving, and you understand now why you make people nervous.

All this relationship is is a power-play. It's one massive attempt to best the other in any way possible. It's self-destruction; it's madness.

The pair of you shouldn't exist.

But you do, because you have never met anyone with a brain as fucked-up-brilliant as your own. No matter how self-destructive it is, you are intrigued.

You don't _date, _not exactly.

Sometimes you just stop by the street that he sells from, and he just follows you. Because. Because he is just as intrigued by you as you are by him.

Sometimes he just shows up at your doorstep and invites himself in. You don't know how he knows where you live. You don't know how he gets in. The first time, you weren't home — you were out talking to a man about a can of paint because why not?

You came home to find him lounging gracefully across the couch in your tiny apartment, an impudent, entitled smirk across his pink lips. You'd raised an eyebrow as you shrugged off your coat and stuck it on the back of the chair.

You'd kissed him just to wipe that damned smirk away.

It'd been one of the few times you'd surprised him. There was something intoxicating about the feeling of his surprise.

That was how it had started, you remember. That was the first time.

You found his family home once. Just to prove that you could. To prove that you could unravel him, if you wanted to. You could find out all the secrets of his past, if you wanted.

You still aren't sure who you were proving it to: him, or yourself.

In some ways, you hate him. He is too much. He makes you feel… vulnerable, and you despise feeling vulnerable. He knows you, and that gives him power over you, and you hate it. You hate giving up power.

But then, for the first time in so long, you don't feel bored. Whatever else you can say about him, you cannot say he's boring. Even to you, you who read human beings like paperbacks, there are parts of him that are… enigmatic. Things you can't quite puzzle out. Things you feel like you're on the cusp of learning, but you aren't quite there. It's maddening. It's frustrating. It's enough to drive you insane.

And that's exactly why you love it.

It's a different sort of high, this unpuzzleable puzzle. You like the challenge. It's addicting — and you, you are a perpetual addict. You are drawn to him, drawn to the _not knowing_ in a way that should have expected you would be — yet you didn't. Something about him stumps you, and you hate it but you love it at the same time, and you wonder if that makes you a masochist. You savor the frustration that is driving you mad and decide maybe it does. You don't care. Or you do, and that's the problem. You've begun to care, and that, that is exactly why you need to quit. The cocaine _and_ this fucked-up thing you call a relationship.

_Caring is not an advantage._


End file.
